Spend a little time educating yourself about Ralph and you’ll learn a lot about mass media and mass (car) market character assassination. GM actually paid a prostitute to try to entrap Ralph prior to his testimony before congress.

The mechanism is as follows: the politician is driving along and the mechanism detects a drop in the average quality of life, fed by some wifi-internet device. Suddenly the alarm lights come on and through loud hidden external speakers the track Killing in the Name by Rage Against The Machine plays, the trunk pops open at the end of the song and shoots out a box filled with marshmallows for any bystanders. Then the car catches on fire and after about 5 minutes, explodes multiple times. The explosions continue for another 5 minutes after which everybody can sing Kumbaya and enjoy some nice marshmallows.

Because that would give me back at least 5 % life quality. And I would thoroughly enjoy the marshmallows =)

Possibly the best political article ever. You deserve a Pulitzer, no kidding. Keep up the good work.

@”noone” – Nader’s a whore. Any political credibility he might have had has been squandered.

I should probably go “learn some history!”

What history should I learn? What has Nader done that has had a positive effect?

The whole point of thinking economically is to see who benefits and who loses.

When congress repealed the 55 mph federal speed limit law in 1995 Ralph Nader said “history will never forgive Congress for this assault on the sanctity of human life.”

33 states raised their speed limits after the repeal, and the average fatality rate fell in those states.

Meanwhile, Americans have saved some 200 million manhours in terms of less time spent on the road. The net economic benefit of raising the speed limit has been between $2 and $3 billion a year.
This is an example of an “unintended consequences”. None of us are smart enough to realize all the contingencies, all the possible effects of every action, but free market capitalists just realize that unintended things happen when government gets involved, no matter how moral or good they think they’re being

“If they don’t close these [nuclear] reactors down, we’ll have civil war in five years.” — Ralph Nader in 1977

“The idea that Social Security is going to run out of money is simply nonsense. Panic fueled by opportunistic politicians and investment firms poses the only serious threat to the program.” – Ralph Nader 2000
in fact Nader still holds that opinion and is adamantly opposed to any form of privitazation.

He is a hardcore paternalistic statist, more than any other vocal public figure, he wants a nanny state. He is the most vocal socialist in the United States

and how about his idea to invest billions into these public works labor programs. Have you heard of the “Broken Window Fallacy”? It goes like this: “Hey, the economy is bad, so lets go break all the windows downtown, that will jumpstart the economy because the window makers will get money, and construction guys will get money, and that money will filter out and be great!”. The problem is that its complete garbage. What you’ve just done is transfer money that could have been used for say, baby food, or a new car, or an investment in a new technology, and put it towards something that didn’t need to be done in the first place. And you’ve taken workers who could be doing something productive and made them rebuild and fix something you broke, you set them back. It always results in the net loss. Nader doesn’t understand this.

“we should have an economy where one breadwinner can produce a middle class standard of living” – Ralph Nader

…and he goes on to talk about how government can make that happen. He wants to raise the minimum wage drastically, to 10 dollars an hour. This is why Ron Paul supporters need to understand economics, why its absolutely essential.
Heres the deal with the minimum wage. When you raise the minimum wage, unemployment among the poor shoots up, every time.
Why? Think about it, every person is worth a certain amount to his employer, depending on his skills, say a person who can sweep and clean the floor is worth 7 dollars an hour to his current employer, and Nader wants a 10 dollar an hour min wage; that means the employer needs to pay that worker 3 dollars extra charity, by law. Now, charity is cool, its a great idea…but most employers are not in a position to just give out charity, they simply cannot afford to do it. Even if they can afford it, they’ll look for some other more economical way.

So what is the result?
The employer will fire or lay off the low skilled person, and hire people with more skills to replace the old worker. People who can sweep and clean and work the register for instance, all of those together are worth $10/hr to the employer. So they consolidate workers, lay people off, have less people overall working for them. Who loses? The poor classes and low skilled workers lose, the businesses lose because they can’t get people to do very low skill jobs, unless they hire illegal immigrants, which is a whole other issue that ties in. This is econ 101.

This is why Walmart is lobbying to increase the minimum wage. Why would they do that? Why not just increase what they pay people, right? Because if there is a minimum wage law, they can guiltlessly lay off the bottom rung of their workforce and consolidate.

-How about education? Well, first off, all studies have shown that the average cost per pupil for public schools is twice that of private schools. Private schools cost less, half as much, as public school, and give a better education. So, the system is broken, we can all agree on that. What does Nader want to do about it?

“We call for equitable state and national funding of school education and the creation of schools controlled by parent-teacher governing bodies.”
He wants more funding, more taxes, more government. Again.
Across the board pay raises for public school teachers. So, in a free market, if something doesn’t work, if people don’t like it, it goes bankrupt and is automatically replaced by something that does work. Thats the basis of the invisible hand… isn’t that the exact opposite of what Nader wants to do? Something doesn’t work, so give it MORE money? Government monopoly schooling is a failure, so pay them more?

-How about free trade?
“The Case Against Free Trade: GATT, NAFTA and the Globalization of Corporate Power” by Ralph Nader
He is vehemently anti-free trade.
Another economic parable like the broken window fallacy is the Candlemakers petition, in which the candle makers of France go to the government and ask that they enact laws forcing people to block out the sun by closing shutters during the day, and putting up large walls. This would have the effect of increasing consumption of products: tallow, leading to the increased production of meat, wool, hides, etc; vegetable oil, leading to the increased production of poppies, olives, and rapeseed; resinous trees, leading to more bees, hence crop pollination; whale oil, leading to a larger merchant navy that would boost France’s prestige and standing.
They argue, in this hilarious satire, that by blocking out the sun, the economy would benefit. Of course its complete garbage and it shows how absurd the anti-free trade movement is. Nader wants to essentially make laws blocking out cheaper, better products which have a net gain on our society because hes under the mistaken belief that it’ll help the economy. Hes wrong. Economists know hes wrong.

-Ralph Nader wants a version of universal health care where every single person under 18, would have their health care paid for by taxpayers.

-Ralph Nader strongly favors harsh gun control laws, and many insiders have said he wants to eventually push for the complete elimination of “private guns”, or guns in the hands of citizens

-”I would keep the estate tax, number one.”
The estate tax (aka, the death tax, which is 55% over a specified amount of everything a person owns including all property, equipment, life insurance, everything) is the most inefficient tax on the books in the US, upwards of 75% of it is wasted (ie, goes to the maintenance of the tax itself, paperwork, tax collectors). Its a punishment tax. It was designed in the era when socialists were influencing culture and people wanted a way to stop wealth accumulation.
The ironic part is that the wealthiest people in the US can easily avoid the tax using all sorts of financial methods, the people who get stuck with it are middle class business owners trying to pass on a legacy to their children. This tax destroys middle class family businesses and Nader is enthusiastic about it. Economists of all stripes hate this tax because it does nothing, the money is wasted.

What am I missing? Enlighten me please, noone

JT
http://www.FireMe.To/udii